For my modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I decided to draw the prologue of the book as a modern representation of gangs in Oakland. The topic I’m using is violence and gangs. The message is supposed to be along the lines of; It doesn’t always have to be so violent, there could be a change in the pattern. There could be a change to for the better instead of the same “You kill mine, I kill yours.” The picture shows a women that’s a member of the Crips gang and a women who’s a member of the Blood gang. It also shows a pattern of red then blue but where they stand it’s purple meaning that they (the two women) are together and in love. In our school, everyone is banned to wear red or blue clothing so we won’t be affiliated with gangs members around our community. A person could just be killed on the street for “wearing the wrong color.” I am proud about how this drawing came out after some time and hopefully it gets my point across. I wish that gang violence could end so we don’t have to see other person’s death on the news.

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This is a youth-powered social network that was started in 2003 by a group of teachers from local sites of the National Writing Project.

We merged several earlier blogging projects. We have found that there are many advantages to bringing students together in one site that lives beyond any particular class. It's easier for individual students to read and write about their own passions, to connect with other students, comment on each other's work, and create multimedia posts for each other. Further, it's been exciting for us to pool our knowledge about curriculum, connected learning, and digital literacies.

If being part of such a community makes sense to you, we invite you to join us. We welcome all youth and any teacher interested in having students publish online and participate in the give and take of a social network like Youth Voices.